First of all, I would wait until he is actually in less pain. I am six weeks out from rad. and the mouth pain I have is still pretty bad. I am on oxydose a liquid form of oxycontin that you have to take every 3 hours). Although remembering to take it (and needing to wake up in the middle of sleep at night to take it before I get in serious pain) is kind of a hassle, what I like is I can go from none at all during the day (if I am drinking enough liquid to keep my mouth moist and not doing anything like teethbrusing that irritates my sore spots I can go a couple of hours after 3 hours is up sometimes without needing a new dose) to taking more at night when I tend to have breakthrough pain, as well as more sever drymouth whivh agravates the sore spots. In general I take 5 mg doses during the day and 10 mg doses when I'm sleeping. My doc said I can go up to 15 if I need it for pain at night and I seem to need it MORE lately, thbough I think this is just ebcause my body has adjusted to the oxy and so i need more to get the same effect now.

I haven't really noticed any withdrawal symptoms on days when I go up or down in amount so far. Anyway, my original point was meant to be that although I can see some of the sores in my mouth healing, I still have a couple of painful spots, espcially at night, and I don't think I'm ready to go off it entirely yet. So it may be you shouldn't yet worry about the tapering off. The worst mouuth pain I had was about 1-3 weeks after rad.